The Creative Scholars Project is a weekly discussion group – hosted by the Creative Mind Initiative and the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts - which examines creativity as it plays out in the teaching and research of faculty and students across academic disciplines at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. These conversations are a critical engagement with our creative processes in our teaching, research, and scholarship. We are interested in promoting interdisciplinary and interinstitutional conversations about what creativity is, how to better foster conditions for promoting it, and how to translate these insights into more effective pedagogies for teaching creative process within our respective disciplines.

Hanna McPhee is Brown senior, completing an independent concentration in “Biologically Inspired Design.” Her thesis explores the scientific process alongside design methods with the goal of finding a more holistic approach to problem solving for interdisciplinary collaborations. I am sitting across the table from my thesis advisor. We stare at one another in silence, our...

This is a first iteration of the website for the summer STEAMstudio class for Summer@Brown. The goal is to combine blended online learning with STEAM curricula. I’m also hoping to make this available to students working in the Prince Lab Makerspace, DesignStudio, and ENGN1000 this spring. This is just a first iteration, really more of...

Come join RISD+Brown STEAM as we ideate STEAM education resources and curricula to put together a “toolkit” for educators. We have been leading up to the development of this for a while and will be building on what we have learned through workshops, speakers, and conversations. We will be deciding on our target audience and...

THE CREATIVE SCHOLARS PROJECT: WEEK OF 11/19/13 1) We will continue the conversation this week about the possibilities of online learning and STEAM curricula with special guest, and RISD Graphic Design Professor, John Caserta. We will discuss how visual literacy and new digital tools (such as those designed by John, i.e.: ) allow us to...

by Deb Mills-Scofield STEAM’D about STEM STEM, critical to America’s economic and innovative future, illustrates our educational systems’ decades long appreciation of the need for more science and math and, simultaneously, the decades long depreciation of the arts. That’s why I’m STEAM’D about STEM! Fortunately, the tide is shifting with the growing recognition and inclusion...

In recent years, there has been much talk around Brown, and at other campuses across the country, about the great promise of online education. Indeed, online learning communities such as Wikipedia, Coursera, and MIT Opencourseware, amongst many others, have reshaped the way we produce and exchange knowledge. Online learning has democratized knowledge in an unprecedented...